


The Night, She Hungers

by TheCokeworthCauldrons



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Absinthe, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Bisexual Remus Lupin, Bisexual Severus Snape, Cuckolding, Decadence, F/M, Hedonism, M/M, Master of Disguise Tonks, Multi, Organized Crime, Pining, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Secret Relationship, Seduction, Spies & Secret Agents, Store Owner Remus Lupin, Threesome - F/M/M, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, everyone is bi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:21:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23303809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCokeworthCauldrons/pseuds/TheCokeworthCauldrons
Summary: A night life for the stars covers a seedy underbelly in the 1940’s big city, where a network of spies conspire against the overwhelming might of Old Tom’s criminal empire.Severus, too long undercover in the heart of hedonism and moral decay, struggles with his coveting the married couple assigned to his mission: Nymphadora Tonks, a daring new operative working right under his nose; and Remus Lupin, her mysterious handler, whose gift for violence lurks within a witty shopkeep Severus has grown too fond of during the precious nights whiled away in his shop.
Relationships: Past Severus Snape/Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy, Remus Lupin/Nymphadora Tonks, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape, Remus Lupin/Severus Snape/Nymphadora Tonks, Severus Snape/Nymphadora Tonks
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	The Night, She Hungers

**Author's Note:**

> There isn’t nearly enough of this ship in my opinion, so here it is: love in the time of radium.

A body would be hard pressed passing by _Le Paon Blanc_ on a Friday night to peek over the velvet robes and think it the dullest club on the strip. It wasn’t by half. 

The converted mansion decorated the city’s richest district, stretching from corner to corner on the street side and eating up a quarter of the avenue past that, and it _still_ wasn’t enough to contain its mass of milling models and ministers in their glossy black and cream white limousines wrapping around the block. 

The porters and the factory girls dressed in their evening best only to be shooed across the street to look on in envy. They gasped at every glimpse of the chandeliers dripping crystals, sparkling like diamonds, pouring twinkling, champagne light on the blonde or balding heads of the _ton._

Late night smoke breakers spat at the opulence. A few flicked up their caps to catch the eye of a fat cat, but few such eyes wandered from their owners’ reflections in the tinted windows as dates were helped out of their luxury cars. Even if they did catch an eye, it’d look right through them, the working folk invisible in the curbside dark. 

“Christ, look at ‘em,” one man growled. He stood in his shirt and suspenders, coat hugging his girl’s rounded shoulders. It was warm enough out for him to roll up his sleeves and feel the evening on his forearms. “Every fuckin’ night.”

“I know! Ain’t they beautiful?,” his company sighed. He frowned down at her, disgruntled. 

The pretty radium girl coughed into her handkerchief and hurriedly stuffed it back in her purse, cheeks flushed with excitement. Her bright eyes glittered like the rich women’s jewelry. She watched with a strained but bated breath while all the trophy wives teetered on the arms of the city’s wealthiest men, heels planted in that pristine, plush-looking carpet. Staking claims, belonging to all the finery. 

Her guy knew that rug would be snatched from under any one of those ladies between tonight and tomorrow’s night. Money didn’t like the nice ones. He knew it, and so did she. 

But she still squealed, bouncing on her kitten heels as her boss’s new girlfriend greeted the doormen, arm-in-arm with the squat and already sweating Mr. Pettigrew. She’d seen the stunning redhead in the manager’s office, cigarette holder pinched between lovely, gloved fingers as she traded barbs. She’d laughed, flashing perfect ivory teeth, her huge curls shining rosy gold even in the anemic, fluorescent lights. 

Knowing that the old factory washed everyone out, this young woman begged her young man for a date across from the _Le Blanc’s_ distant shore. Seeing her again in ankle-length pink crushed velvet, she beamed, dreaming up whatever joke the lady told to break the doormen out in chuckles. She bet it was clever. 

But then Mr. Pettigrew and his date were waved inside, and her night out was over. 

The couple across the street would go down for a drink at their favorite pub a half an hour train ride away. Then they might go dancing where she could spin in her neon-speckled dress, spin and spin in the club dark, making the place _ooh_ and _ahh._ She already glowed in the nighttime, he thought.

He pulled her close while she shivered, wracked by her strange chills. He helped her walk, since she tired so quickly these days, and she breathily asked, “Did you see?,” while he nodded yes, brows furrowed at a rusty smear in the corner of her lips. 

* * *

“And this must be the glamorous Miss Minnow. Peter’s been on and on about you,” Lucius Malfoy drawled.

Tonks feigned flattery at her uncle’s leer. Part of the disguise was to smile indulgently at him after trading hellos with her frigid aunt. 

“All terrible things, I hope,” she quipped. 

“Absolutely dreadful. That’s why I demanded he show you off here instead of in that death trap he calls a factory. Precious gems are meant to be seen.” 

She tittered, glancing at his hands folded on his signature snakehead cane. Rumor said it hid a needle-thin sword, as expected from just his breed of self-important jackass. Lucius wriggled his fingers into a tight fist around the silver snake's throat, as if staying himself.

The fact that she’d be dodging those greedy fingers all night exhausted her. Still, she stayed prim and upright, feet already swelling in her shoes, ready for the night of her life.

“Come, it’s like I’ve known you for ages. It’s obvious why he likes you so much. You’re quite the looker.” Lucius beckoned her closer and Tonks accepted his lingering hug, smiling winningly through the cloud of his cologne. Expensive like his suit. Both probably cost more than her rent. 

“I’m a speaker and great listener, too,” she joked. 

“Not too great, let’s hope,” Narcissa said, ice-blue eyes cutting like a sheer wind. The spy leaned in to give a peck on the cheek offered to her. 

_Thread the needle,_ she reminded herself, making her smile a touch more blithe at Lucius’s curious quirk of brow. 

“Yes,” he mused. His voice dipped just below the live bands playing at each other from their many stages. She didn’t hear what he said next, but reading his lips as best she could, saw, “unfortunate,” clear as day.

She kept nodding. 

_Fuck. Pull back. Not too cunning. Ambitious, but straightforward._ She held her sense of Maggie Minnow firm in her mind.

Her disguise was a railroad magnate’s niece, too pretty and smart for the country where her parents did honest work, shipped to the city for an education in business and taken in by the biggest business: crime. 

It wouldn’t do to make aims at the owner of _Le Blanc,_ the prime minister’s favorite millionaire, upon first meeting.

Firstly, his notoriously disdainful wife would have her vanished for too much boldness. Not for sleeping with her husband, mind—who hasn’t? But for the sin of too much arrogance. There wasn’t a nose held higher than her aunt’s in all of Riddle’s circle. If there ever dared to be, Narcissa wouldn’t hesitate to clip it. 

And secondly, she couldn’t afford to lose face, what with him being quite presently married and her curling more onto Pettigrew’s trembling arm. Dumping Pettigrew too soon would make her look more than honest: it’d make her look stupid. And more than arrogant, _stupid_ would have her out in the cold. 

“Sh-shall we take this to your lounge, Lucius?,” Pettigrew suggested. Her corrupt factory owner shook, terrified through all their niceties. Tonks’s wig dropped half its curls with her fastened to him, trembling like a belt at the spa. She’d shed five pounds by night’s end if he kept it up—and if her uncle ran her ragged trying to steal her for himself.

Lucius’s leer returned, stronger now that his wanting could become taking: “Yes, let’s do. We’re right up here, Miss Minnow. It keeps us from wrinkling our clothes bumping about in the crowd.”

Tonks steeled herself and looked up coyly, offering up one, awed look through her most wispy lashes, stuck on with wig glue to keep them put. They weren’t for batting. It’d likely sicken her aunt to see that. From what her mother would share about her, Narcissa hated simpering. Again, why Pettigrew was Tonks’s perfect foil. Him shaking out of his Italian loafers made her head look all the cooler. 

No, her lashes were to cover her scanning eyes with excess prettiness. If she faced down and away, no one noticed her survey a room. It also exaggerated her looking up, so she could do it to great effect. 

“Goodness, I'd be honored,” she breathed, gazing up into her uncle’s face. He oozed smug pleasure. Holding his wife respectably close, he led the way upstairs. 

* * *

Severus rolled over, disgusted by the high times leaking through his bedroom walls. He unfurled from the knot of smooth covers grown around him in his sleep. Something bumped into his foot and, irritated, he kicked it to the floor only to hiss, regretful at the _thunk_ and _glug_.

The heady smell of absinthe instantly took over the must of slept-in clothes and yesterday’s failed experiments.

He sat up, attempted to run a hand through his snarl of unwashed hair, and gave it up for a lost cause. Sliding across the massive king-sized bed to his feet in the sodden carpet, he sucked his teeth. The ridiculous polar bear skin rug was already stained to grizzly by his long residence banning cleaners and his general boredom with upkeep. 

“Ugh.” He righted the deep green bottle and ground the spilled liquor into the fur. No one would notice. 

Shambling into the bathroom, the music echoed even louder off the marble and glass. This was his rooster at dawn the last few years. This was living with Lucius.

Cokeworth being bulldozed for a highway meant he hadn’t any home and karmic justice, seeing his evil deeds—lifetimes worth, probably—provided him a “generous friend” with an obscene amount of guest rooms and no need for rent. All he needed to do was adapt to a nocturnal lifestyle. Not a tall task for him, surely?

 _Slam!_ He threw open the vanity cabinet and rattled the bottles until he found his painkillers. Orange bottle, label written over in marker. They’d compliment his residual drunk quite nicely. 

He drank water directly from the tap, realizing how thirsty he was as it dribbled down his chin back into the basin. All drinking liquor ever did was put him to sleep and dry him out later. Hopefully one day, if he kept at it, he’d shrivel up, and the day the staff was let into his rooms would be when they discovered his withered husk. 

Gilded this and hand stitched that easily costumed a curse as good fortune. In his twenties, Severus thought this was _it,_ finally a world away from his meager start in a dying town.

He learned since that he only needed to develop his craft to the whims of a violent madman. Only needed to entertain the advances of Lucius and his wife for a time, and weather whatever perversion that bore in him. Only needed to share an ornate roof with a criminal syndicate and worst of all, be its last working brain cell in a den of gluttony and ill repute.

Was he a good person? No. Did that mean he _enjoyed_ the company of evil people? Not even for a moment. If only bacchanalia were the whole of it, he could refrain and live largely in peace.

Severus shrugged on his duster and toed into old shoes, once dusted with road dirt and forest soil, now polished by fine floors and brushed on thousand dollar rugs. Uncombed, wrinkles pressed from his clothes by heavy sleep, he carried a reek from stewing in his habits for days. Ready, he took to the dim halls, melting into the shadows. 

_Food._ Right, he hadn’t eaten in nearly a day. His latest tests took over his every last scrap of attention, only to still fail. Sleeping till he tempted death felt like the only actionable next step considering how deeply he despaired. It hurt even to think about. 

_Hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars, wasted!_ He needed the distraction of food. He’d look for something expensive to refuse to Lucius’s face. He indulged in a few cardinal sins last night and felt that needed immediate correction. Openly denouncing his host’s vices was his only joy anymore. 

He stalked the halls of the manor, hoping to suss out a tryst to dispel with put on moral outrage. Maybe the kitchens? He changed course, expecting there’d be no end to decadence there.

Rosier stumbled up the opposite way, other men’s wives giggling on each arm, one so young as to clearly be someone’s daughter. The hit man stopped at seeing Severus step from the dark and guffawed drunkenly, lifting his hands from down both women’s glittery gowns. 

“Uh oh, ladies! Professor Snape’s on the prowl. We’d best get on,” Rosier slurred, honey hair falling into his eyes.

Severus sneered at the women. Handsome as Rosier was, the man had more knives than human decency. They’d be flayed and carved to mutton if he coaxed them into his rooms.

“Come now, Professor,” Evan cooed, winking, teeth sharp in the low lamplight. During club hours, Lucius had the residential wings darkened to dissuade wanderers—hide stains, prevent misgivings, cover traces of missing guests until a story was made straight. Low lights until morning.

“It’s just a bit of fun. You’re welcome to join us.”

Severus said nothing, meeting eyes with both women, letting the idea of him joining them sink in. He resembled what Rosier was: hideous, unsavory.

Two pairs of eyes widened and looked to each other; perfumed shoulders hitched in discomfort. Evan smiled coldly then, dropping his arms from around them and tucking his balled fists in his pockets. He let the women make their excuses and hurry back toward the brightly lit dance floors, holding Severus’s bored gaze until they were gone. Then tilted his head until what little light there was caught on his blue eyes, and he grinned, licking his teeth like a butcher might clean a blade.

“You should loosen up, Snape. All that virtue isn’t worth much, knowing what you’ve done for our Lord.” 

“I’m sorry? Do you think I care?,” he replied.

Job done, he continued on his way, only for Rosier to grab him by the wrist. He looked down at that sure grip on his sleeve and knew the killer would have another date within the hour. They both knew it. He shook him off, sickened by his touch. 

Severus walked on while Evan called after him: “No school would have you, professor. You might as well have a good time! Give in! Show someone special what’s under all that black!”

Aware that he only stoked Rosier’s bloodlust, he continued toward the kitchens.

* * *

A few hours of nursing drinks soon had “Maggie Minnow” in the group’s good graces. Listening to Lucius talk and Narcissa correct him, she laughed when she meant to and not when she was cued, which endeared her to her aunt over the course of the evening. Narcissa assigned a waiter to keep Tonks’s glass full and watched her drain flute after flute while reclined, slowly thawing, a smile threatening her pursed lips. 

“Maggie’s” bold storytelling had the myriad other folks invited in and out of the lounge in stitches—actresses and tycoons hooted, perched on ottomans and chair arms to hear more.

“And I won’t be embarrassed to say he liked the wind between his legs a bit _too_ much. I won’t miss the prospects out in the prairie, I can tell you that for free!” 

Her popularity fed Pettigrew to bursting. The man laughed far too often and too loud, his shifty little eyes eating up all the adoring faces surrounding his date. She kept a hand on his knee while she worked the room and the little rat couldn’t be happier.

 _Good._ She checked her watch for the time, the glowing green watch face drawing a few respectful nods.

A gift from Pettigrew’s factory that she felt compelled to wear, sad as it made her. She’d seen enough pictures of ailing girls to know the light of her accessory proved a death sentence, but the rich only saw its fashion. 

“It suits you.”

Tonks gave a tight smile to Narcissa, who moved to sit next to her, pushing Pettigrew to the end of the gold-tasseled couch. The sound-proofed balcony lounge overlooked the club, grown humid from their talking and the dancing below.

“Your complexion favors the glow. It’s very funny, because no one looks good in such an alien green. Well, except me,” Narcissa smirked. “And now you.”

Clearly tipsy, platinum chignon unraveled to fall over her bare shoulder, she offered her glass to clink with Tonks’s. On high alert, the woman’s niece toasted and set her bubbly on an offered tray.

She fanned herself, hoping to move the thick air, huffing, “God, I’ve been pouring it down all night. Can anyone point me to the little girl’s room?”

Narcissa ignored her, pulling a curl of copper hair between her fingers, noting, “What lovely red hair.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, leaning away until the lock fell back beside her face. “The lavatory, please?”

“Lucius, isn’t she charming?”

Her uncle sat up, sniffling, thumbing his nose. He tucked a cigarette case in his inside jacket pocket. From the zeal coming over his face and his haphazardly parting the leaving guests, she could guess: a powder refresher. 

“Very charming, yes.” Lucius waved the last of the guests out, leaving her alone in the room abuzz with muffled music. The lights dimmed, curtains drawing closed.

 _God, no,_ she dreaded.

Kingsley had offered to find another person for this case, knowing she’d have to rub elbows with her own family by design. She regretted refusing twelve times over, cursing her filthy luck in the moment it took Lucius to rise to his feet. Looming over her, pointed features in stark relief in the red light of the silk-shaded lamps, she felt his smile unzip rows of too-white teeth. 

Tonks stood, challenging his height but swaying in her stiletto heels. All the drinking rushed to her head, and she stumbled, only to be caught around the waist and dipped, sweating through her hot velvet gown, revolted by the hand sliding down her exposed back.

“Mmm, beautiful, red hair. I’ve a friend who’ll love a piece of you,” her uncle purred in her ear. It was the fanciest her ear had ever been dressed: with diamonds dangling to her shoulder. She hated every second. 

She hated the long hair sewn to her head. Its shitty combs dug into her scalp and bred with champagne, birthing a _rotten_ headache. She hated the throttling, draping fashions of flowing skirts and plunging necklines. They suited her boyish frame too closely, especially as they wrapped around her legs, trapping her between the hungry beasties closing in, itching to eat her alive.

She hated the teeter-totter heels, missing her socks with the holes in both big toes inside her steel-capped boots. They dented more than a few walls on her daily trip-and-flail. 

She missed being so comfortable it made other people uncomfortable, and usually she wouldn’t think about it during a mission since thems were the breaks. But she might’ve been drunk and her evil uncle wanted to fuck her, so she maintained her right to complain.

“A-a friend! I like friends!,” she tried, struggling to step away when bundled in her evening gown. Tonks hooked her hands into Lucius’s shoulders, digging in her nails, damning his thick shoulder pads for sparing him the stab.

“I’d love to meet them! Are they here tonight?”

“Yes. After I’m finished with you, Wormtail can fetch him.” Tonks wished she had her gun. “It’s my club he’s squatting in, so he’s not allowed to mind if I have first _taste_.”

She expected acting smart enough would interest them in her future prospects. She would charm and shmooze, throw over Pettigrew in a month, maybe two. It would lead to a slow courting into the goings-on behind scenes at the club, but no. Plucked fresh from the vine on the first night and forced to fight her way out.

This _always_ happened. She nearly lost her head as a bottle girl, fighting off that sadist McNair in a private room, of which _Le Blanc_ had dozens. Had to jump into a river to avoid Yaxley’s lovers trying to wear her like a coat. Bellatrix Lestrange, that absolute madwoman, caught one look at her playing valet and broke her arm in a car door. Said she “didn’t like those eyes.” And Tonks couldn’t take a city bus without Shunpike hearing about it and knife fighting her on the street.

Laughing nervously while trying to slide out of Lucius’s arms, Tonks started to feel like a cheap date. Why couldn’t she crack this place?

Did she look too young? Did she play it too naive? Did she joke around too much? What always reduced her to a one night brawl in a back alley? _If_ she escaped alive, she could look forward to another six months lying low and the migraine of slapping together some new identity, finding some new contact, weaseling into a new one of the hundred doors into _Le Paon Blanc._

It was a maze of swollen egos and dirty minds, this club. A fucking maze with walls a mile high and a new bad end around every godforsaken corner.

She strained to see over her shoulder and just found Pettigrew by the door, trembling with anticipation of some awful savagery. 

_What a joke,_ she scoffed, making the antsy man squeak. Dark with disappointment, Tonks shimmied out of heels, shrinking four inches in a blink. 

“Oh, she’s tiny! Oh, Lucius, grab her! She’s just like a little pixie!,” her aunt clapped, now truly lost to her cups. Dress-straps slipped off her shoulders, the woman disheveled and turning pink. 

Tonks shook her head and sidestepped Lucius, trying not to trip on her shoes. He was quick, and she couldn’t promise to be quicker than the angel dusting his flared nostrils. She lunged at Pettigrew and he dove out of her way, Tonks much more frightening with a Malfoy right on her heels.

Lucius dove for her, snarling, and she ducked away, squawking as she stumbled past waiters, knocking over trays laden with glassware and finger foods.

“Move!,” she yelled, narrowly catching her balance. 

A waiter spun away from her, spilling wine and shrimp cocktail in a shock as she slapped past him in stockinged feet. She powered down the hall, elbows pumping, high knees fighting her dress, head down like a charging bull, hearing the crash and clamor of the club owner bowling over his employees in her wake.

Adrenaline beat back wine which beat back fear as she skidded around a corner, shaving past a tall man so closely that his long coat slapped her thigh. She smelled absinthe—anise and burning, hard liquor—and a huff of sulfur as he shouted after her. 

“Snape! Grab her!”

She saw a shadow, black as pitch, and assuming it was Malfoy’s security, faked left and banked right, shaking off the couple of servers running after her, splattered with pates and sauces. 

She knew the way to the second floor kitchens and knew the window left open for the chef to smoke. She just had to swing through it and climb down the neighboring drain pipe to the street. She could afford to lose her grip, if it happened. A second story fall wouldn’t kill—

“Shit!” They had her!

She fought, arms pinned to her sides by the crush into a man’s chest, her stained feet kicking, flinging dropped food at her captors. The man to grab her was stick-thin and too strong for it, lifting her off her feet, making her double over, panicked; had her wrestling her arms free and clawing for purchase in his leather coat.

There it was again, stronger this time: black licorice and brimstone. 

“Fantastic, Severus!” Lucius hustled toward her, wild-eyed, spitting out his own loose hair. “Give her here!”

She was gripped tighter and swore. Her uncle reached for her wet ankle.

 _Calm down!_ Curling up until her stomach burned. _Get free!_

Tonks jackknifed, heels driving into Lucius’s chin so hard she heard his neck snap back and him groan, felled, collapsing into the waiters behind him. Her pounding head slammed into a nose and teeth, and she was dropped with a curse. She scrambled dizzily onto all fours, and slouching, ears ringing, took off for the kitchens, slipping in _Dom Perignon._

Too woozy to cling to a pipe, she hid in an alcove until packs of staff and guards ran past. Once alone, panting in the empty hallway, listening to the distant shouts, she slouched into a trash chute, bracing for impact as the wind whistled past until she hit the empty dumpster and, screaming more swears, clambered out, preying she didn’t land on broken glass. 

Standing there, shoe-less, soaked through with garbage water, Tonks wished she could rip off her wig without taking hair with it. Instead, she limped farther into the alley, knowing her old way back. Then she stopped. She patted her bra and remembered she didn’t wear one with this gown. 

“Fuck, man.” She’d left her clutch in the lounge. It hadn’t anything pertinent to ID her with, but cab fare? Hell, train fare?

She’d have to walk until she recognized someone—again. It wasn’t the first time she wished she could just take the bus and fall asleep until the streets looked like home. 

_Still, tonight was the closest I’ve ever gotten._ It was a damn shame she’d be sending Maggie back to the countryside. She was Tonks’s most effective disguise by far. If only she hadn’t been so damn lovable—but she’d take whatever victory she could get. 

_Godspeed, Miss Minnows._ She saluted her reflection in the puddle of dumpster juice under-swollen-foot.

Starting her long hike, Tonks was glad for the curtain she wore as she tucked herself back in her top and, wincing, bent over to gird her lions. Tearing slits into her skirt, she folded and tucked with deft familiarity. She dragged an arm across her forehead, unwittingly smearing the trickle of blood from where teeth had grazed her scalp. Thus readied in her crushed velvet diaper, made up in pink-tinged sweat, she waddled proudly into the night. 

* * *

“I want her found and gutted,” Lucius wheezed, icing his bloody lip. What little that kick didn’t smash, his fall did. 

Severus scowled, joining Narcissa on the couch to paw through Miss Margeret Minnow’s leavings. The millionaire’s wife had tucked into the couch’s corner to nap off her dizzy evening. She likely wouldn’t realize what happened to Lucius till morning. Then she’d storm Severus’s suite demanding answers, and he’d have them for her, if not the very girl stuffed and mounted.

 _A magnate’s niece? Very likely._ He threw down the rag he had to his nose, bleeding stopped. _Fake._ Severus squinted at a wad of rolled bills, a few hand-rolled cigarettes, and a clip of business cards for Wulfric Railways Transcontinental. _Fake._

“Idiots. You’ve been had.” He spat blood in his rag, cursing how it made his teeth throb. “She’s a ghost.”

“What? How do you know?,” Lucius asked, glaring. 

“I know.” He couldn’t explain how, despite very much wanting to. 

With his nose bridge a smidge more recessed into his skull, he could’ve used the relief of a proper telling off. He closed his eyes on Lucius whining into an ice pack, and imagined an hour spent gathering who and when and why he’d been assaulted by one of _that man’s_ listening ears. He imagined spending three more hours telling Lucius about himself in gruesome detail.

How didn’t he see it?

_Brian’s Bottle Service: McNair’s brained with a scotch older than the girl who brought it, a label he can’t afford; the girl he grabbed goes missing._

_Percival Parking: Lestrange snaps a car boy in two saying he looks like her sister. No one knows the valet’s full name._

_Yaxley and his coat room girlfriends drenched and worked into a froth. Stan Shunpike abandoning his runs to get stabbed on random street corners._

The moles were different descriptions, across different genders and sizes. _Almost_ different people except for never tall, never broad, always clumsy enough to nearly get caught. Tonight was the closest they’d ever come to grabbing them. Severus literally had her in his arms, before she left him smelling his own thoughts. 

_Wulfric Railways Transcontinental._ _I’ll be goddamned if I’m not being undermined._

His next thought was of his arms around her waist before she pummeled him. Feeling her heart hammering through her back and knowing the horrors Lucius meant for her as he stalked her up the halls; seeing the copper curls and going numb. Thinking she was heavier than she looked. Feeling the hard muscles bunch under the velvet, firm and strong. 

He meant to rescue some poor thing, claim her for his own and sneak her out a back entrance. Warn her never to return. Instead, she knocked down two grown men and escaped, likely to return again. With her track record, he suspected she’d return as many times as it took to make her mark. 

He looked at Lucius babying his wounds and wondered why Albus would doubt him. Resigned to a bad night, he gathered Minnow’s things under his arm and made for the door. 

“Where are _you_ off to in such a hurry? Can’t you see I need comforting?,” Lucius complained. 

He didn’t even look his way as he needled Severus. He only leaned back in his chair, satin vest and shirt parted over his blood-freckled chest. His chest hair, Severus knew, was so fair as to appear invisible. Simply presenting himself as the paragon of need, he waited for the other man to come to him. 

Severus rolled his eyes. He was hardly the needy teenager that followed him into hell. He was glad he missed Wormtail when the coward fled from the earlier chaos. He could only imagine that snickering co-sign and, with gut churning, left. 

He didn’t need to explain where. Only Bellatrix still dared to doubt him these days. Given how long he’d been dedicated to the cause, most people assumed his loyalty. After all, if he wasn’t an asset to Old Tom, the things he knew would mean his life.

* * *

“Ah, back again. The usual?”

Severus snorted in reply. His “usual” at Midnight Snack was one bottomless black coffee and a sympathetic—well, present—ear. Complaining cleared his head for a night of shit work, and he felt like he could leave his troubles there to dissolve into the water-damaged wallpaper.

He was sure the shopkeeper never listened while Severus ranted about his job in venomous vagueries. He tended to hum songs when Severus fell quiet, some off-key rendition of the latest droll on the radio. Severus glowered at the glibness, but the other man simply puttered in his tired sweater gone fuzzy from years of wear, the wool reduced to a loose interpretation of yarn and the brown-on-tan patterns rubbed down to just impressions. 

He probably remembered when the shopkeep first wore the sad excuse for clothes. They had a few weary years between them just the same as the weaves in the sweater did.

When Severus snapped, “Well?,” with no follow up or clarification, the shopkeep only raised a scarred brow and offered him another refill.

Feeling equal turns managed and shrugged off, he had his refill, sucking surly pulls from the mug. He made sure to bang on the counter between each sip. That night, he noticed the mug had a new design and curled a lip at it, picking at the enamel with his pinky nail. 

The shopkeep returned to rehang his broom, done with a tone deaf sweep of the empty shop. No one really visited Midnight Snack except for him. It was something of a bakery open past club hours every evening. The pastries were horrendous—cold hardtack shellacked with glaze, like to chip a tooth. The coffee was piss, and the gentle music swooning from the shop’s jukebox made him nauseous. 

Severus suspected it was a drug front or a plot by big dentistry to drive up demand. He favored the loneliness and misery it inspired. And quite frankly, he enjoyed being ignored in the way John always did. If he could, it’d make him laugh. After ten years underground at _Le Blanc,_ that felt like a rare commodity. 

“I’m sorry,” he prodded. “Am I boring you?”

“Oh, never,” John smiled blandly, untying his apron. He hung it beside his broom, making Severus wonder if the shop closed early today. 

_Nobody told me,_ he protested. 

“So I come here seeking some decent service only to get poisoned with the sludge you brew in your,” he pointed accusingly at John, who presented his coffeemaker with a flourish, “rubbish machine! And I’m to be left to die, ignored, on your sticky linoleum? Is that it?”

“Whatever the customer wants. I can certainly feign interest if you’d prefer.” The shopkeep grinned, too obviously amused for Severus not to sit up straighter, growing warm. 

“Don’t bother with it now,” he groused, scratching his nose only to wince when he poked the throbbing swell. “Hell! You see I’m suffering! Go get me some ice.”

“An iced coffee is twenty cents extra.” 

“You’re bleeding me dry,” and he rummaged in his coat for exact change while John chuckled, bending to watch him with elbows propped on the counter, chin propped on the back of his hand. 

Downy-looking curls framed his face in greying, dishwater brown. Downturned eyes softened behind horn-rimmed glasses, dull green and sparkling with wit. Stubbled chin and calloused knuckles made him look anything but a baker. John was an odd man with the knowing air of a scholar and the looseness of old fighters Severus had met, thirty years retired. Their lot lived still defined by their most glorious public thrashings. Little ego, with a respect for something more than words.

“You come here every night for _years_ complaining about your job at the richest club in town,” he ribbed, palm held out for the two dimes owed him, “and can’t pay a working man his due?”

“I’ve never said where I work.” 

John waved off his suspicion: “I see where you come in from. It’s only a few blocks away. Besides, how often can you call your coworker a ‘blustering peacock,’ before I’m forced to cotton on?”

Still, Severus started to worry that he might come here too often and speak a hair too much. As much as these evening sessions kept him tolerant of his night job, they were already reckless. He was simply used to deferring the risk, assuming he was being careful because of how little John proved he knew.

“I’ll give you a dollar to go back to butchering love songs.” Severus dropped the coins in his latticed palm, tensing when they brushed fingertips as those fingers curled, every so slowly.

John’s eyes told of something stirring when he withdrew his hand, and he hummed, “They’ll die bloody,” before turning to the shop’s jukebox, deciding on his next victim. He tapped his feet to the song before it played. 

The first notes of “Some Enchanted Evening,” started to the shopkeep’s dissonant croon. A sonic travesty followed from it worth the dollar to see it performed. John even spared Severus a crooked smile, threw a look into Severus’s face that had him minding his drink for the rest of the song. 

“Hmph. Finally, a job you can do,” he said when it was over. 

John bowed to the absent applause.

As he left to put away dishes, Severus once again scanned his scarred hands for a ring. He did it every time he visited, like a hungry man revisiting the same empty cupboard, expecting new. There wasn’t a wedding band, but the impression of one worn while tanning on some summer vacation or maybe while doing yard work around some idyllic home. It never faded since knowing him, meaning some ring was always worn in the daytime.

Severus drank from the same bitter disappointment as always, bad coffee forgotten. 

John was obviously married, although he didn’t like others to know. He never talked about himself or his home life, his past, even his hobbies or what he did on sunny days. The ring and the scars lent him context without comprehension. Severus liked that, of course. He enjoyed the mysteries people contained. 

The only interesting thing about people, in his mind, were their secrets. That the touch of knowing he snuck from the shopkeep might sting to have, well. It was better than the food. 

* * *

Severus started his search with his usual contact. He pressed Mundungus Fletcher in the petty thief’s “home office.” Picking the lock and slipping into his living room, he grabbed the man by the collar and threw him from the armchair in which he’d passed out to wake, gasping on the grubby floor.

“Y’know I can't say, Snape!,” Dung mumbled around Severus’s shoe. The floor mashed his words from where it met his ruddy face shoved into the beer-stained shag carpet. “I would if I could—hrk!”

“I asked if she’s one of his. It’s a simply yes or no question.” He leaned harder on his heel, hoping to brand it on the man’s forehead. “Don’t make this harder for yourself than it needs to be, Fletcher. _‘Yes’_ or _‘no’_?”

“I’m sworn to secrecy! _”_ He grabbed Severus’s foot, the desperation galling in his rheumy, bloodshot eyes as he pleaded. “Her man’ll rip me to shreds! You gotta understand! You ain’t in the all clear! When no one knows who you’re askin’ for—!”

“I’m asking! That’s reason enough!”

He dragged the thief off the ground and shook him till his gold teeth rattled in his skull. Then he pulled him in close to promise with deadly calm, “I’m not afraid of any man of hers if you can’t even tell me his name. And very unfortunately for you, I’m here and he isn’t. 

“So, you can tell me if she’s Dumbledore’s and hope I’m satisfied with that.” He pulled him closer, till Severus’s bandaged nose and already blackening eye leaned right on Dung’s soul, “Or you can keep _fucking_ me and see where that gets you.”

“P-please, have a care!” 

Severus, losing his patience, freed a hand to reach into his coat.

“Alright! Alright, fucking _Christ!_ She’s new! A-a rookie cop!”

 _He’s recruiting more cops after Mad-Eye? Does he_ want _me in prison?_ He scowled at Dung dripping tears, sweat, and snot. _And the old crowd thinks I’m dirty? That’s nothing new, but Albus’s word usually…_

If his loyalty was in question to this extent, he had to see Dumbledore and hear it for himself. He dropped Fletcher and stepped over him to canvas the apartment. He ripped out every listening device he could find, checked the closets and shower for any unannounced guests. He stopped when cutting the phone lines, noticing the bedroom window open to the fire escape. A cool breeze brought a stink of trash and some sour, still worn fragrance, maybe dry champagne on flushed skin. 

He froze, snapping at Fletcher to shut up long enough to hear a rumble: an engine turning over. 

Severus ran to the sill and searched the alley, “ _Dammit!,”_ and saw a junker with a cracked windshield back out five floors below. He squinted trying to see the driver, but only saw wide, brown-gloved hands gripping the steering wheel. The car took off belching black smoke so thick it covered the license plate. 

“Fuck! Who was he, Dung!?”

The thief hollered at a muffler backfiring as it sped around the street. Stark headlights rolled searching along the pockmarked popcorn ceiling. Guard tower lights combing grounds for rule breakers in need of punishing. 

“Shit! Shit, Snape, _shit!_ He knows I told! You can’t leave me!” He threw himself on the same shoes only just eased off his neck. “For fuck’s sake, if you touch her, he’ll kill me! He’s _part of the fuckin’ Hunt!”_

Severus felt real pause for the first time at hearing the Hunt evoked. Fenrir Greyback and his band of slavering lunatics were more than a gang: they were a cult. The leader mostly targeted the children of silver-haired politicians who vowed to stop him thinking it’d win them a vote. His public regression to beasthood made him a bogeyman. Now part of Riddle’s ranks, his animals mauled anything that so much as breathed a bad word about them anywhere in the city. 

He didn’t envy the thief's fate, but realized in thinking it that he had just shown his own face. Whoever drove that car knew where he’d been and likely why he’d been there. 

Shaking Fletcher off his tear-soaked pant leg, Severus spun out the door, coat snapping, ignored the elevator and took the steps down two at a time. Electing to take the back streets to the next subway stop, he was careful to avoid the roads. He needed to see Dumbledore now more than ever. He hadn’t checked in face-to-face in some time, but was sure of where to find him.

 _A rookie cop with ties to the Hunt?_ He hurried, unsure of who should be trusted least: himself or his masters.

* * *

Few people walked the streets at almost four in the morning. The bars all closed hours ago and all the last busses were missed. Severus travelled alone up the street to Number Twelve, stopping short when he saw the lemon parked outside of Order headquarters.

His stomach sank to see it stuck out from the old elegance of the neighborhood. 

He crept closer to investigate. It couldn’t be, but yes: the same dented junker from outside Fletcher’s apartment. Windshield cracked clean across, coal-black tailpipe. Up close, he saw the two-tone paint job and in the backseat, something red—a wig.

He recalled red hair flying in his face before his vision exploded in stars. A minute passed between him and the quiet street. Arms crossed, blood run cold, he wondered if this meeting could be his last. 

Still he opened the gate, walked up the front steps. His ear still remembered the rhythm of the six steps to the door, like his hand did the weight of the elaborate knocker. He gave the password and was let in by Bill Weasley, who should be stationed in Egypt. The young man nodded at him and let him pass, very possibly like business as usual. 

Perhaps his was a calm before the storm. The expected urge to vanish was shockingly minimal, what with his circumstances, but Severus rode the blank.

He entered the main parlor. Conversation ebbed from the far room. A door opened, silver beard leading, and trailing Albus raising his arms in greeting was a small woman in burgundy men’s trousers. Cuffed pant legs showed scraped, bare shins sprouting from workman’s boots that pounded dust from the ancient floors, _thud thudding_ as she followed close. Her shins looked as sore as his nose, and she limped like she’d taken a tumble. 

A loud, bubblegum pink headscarf hid the bird’s nest tearing a wig off must’ve made of her hair. Nonetheless, short tufts of said hair poked out around her heart-shaped face, those mousy brown tufts so jaggedly cut, it was startling on a woman. Even with her pretty face, he’d have thought her someone’s scab-kneed son. 

But he knew this was her. The young woman had time to change and still stunk of Lucius’s lounge. Ambient smoke and libations, alongside trash. She held herself like she knew her own strength. She was right height, maybe taller by an inch. The right size, although the knowing was brief.

The clothes transformed her. His eyes travelled up her body swallowed in a men’s ivory shirt tucked sloppily into her waistband.

She turned his way.

Her focused expression scared him before her seeing him slackened the whole of her face with surprise. She looked _appallingly_ similar to Narcissa Malfoy—no, Bellatrix Lestrange— _no,_ rather the _third sister,_ the willful one burned out of the family portraits. 

_She did have a daughter, didn’t she?,_ he remembered, lips parting in shock. 

“Severus, I’ve been expecting you,” Albus ushered him closer with a twinkle in his eye. Arranging the shawl he wore to ward off chill, the old man stroked his braided beard contentedly.

“Excellent of you to come, my boy, truly wonderful. It’s been too long.”

“Hardly three years,” he croaked. “That’s nothing. I’ve been gone longer.”

“Yes, but just tonight I’ve heard—.” A floorboard creaked. 

Severus looked to the last person to leave the other room. A man of average height, pushing his hair back from his face. Camel brown gloves clung to broad hands like a second skin and looked bright buried in that head of downy greys. 

_This is him, the one Fletcher mentioned. One of Greyback’s wolf men._ He noticed the horn-rimmed glasses next. Recognition burned. 

“I see you’ve run into the two new operatives that I’ve put on _Le Blanc_ ,” Dumbledore said, delighted. “Nymphadora Tonks-Lupin—you’ll remember her mother, Andromeda Tonks. I believe you attended school together.” 

“Evening,” she grimaced. Each emotion changed her heart-shaped face enough to evoke an entirely different person, every one a pretty stranger. “Sorry about the nose.”

“And her husband, Remus Lupin. I’m told you’ve already met.”

John smiled at him, giving a professional nod: “Hullo. Good to see you.”

Severus made as if to leave. He didn’t, but he made the motions. He turned toward the door and waited for his feet to carry him back to sense and order. Bill Weasley stood guard behind him, concerned. And then he nodded to John’s wife like they were old friends.

Suddenly, a few years in the mire meant all the difference. He needed an explanation. He needed not another word more.

“There have been developments, Severus. Have a seat so we might discuss.”


End file.
